The Moon doesn't appear to be very big from where we here on Earth, but that is only because from our spot, 384, 400 km away, we are looking at the Moon from a 0.52 degree angle. In actuality, the Moon is 3476 km across. On the outer surface of the Moon we can find two main terrains: the heavy, cratered and very old highlands and the smoother, younger area called maria. The maria was formed by huge craters that were filled with molten lava. However, the surface of the Moon, no matter the terrain is covered with a fine dusty, debris material called regolith. The pictures of the Moon that were taken were of the third quarter Moon. Because it is a third quarter Moon, you will notice that the Sun is shining on the left of the picture. The brightest spots of the Moon on these pictures are where it gets the most sunlight. The right of the pictures get dark and hard to read because of its lack of sunlight. There are several reasons as to why the Moon appears to be have dark patches on it; the lava variations, and also the the raised relief from the craters. The Moon has been resurfaced in different areas due to lava, because some areas have been resurfaced more recently than others, the abedo of the lava areas signifies the aging of that surface of the Moon. The rays that appear to be around the craters in these pictures show us that these are newer craters. If the craters were older, then these rays would have usually been covered up by resurfacing of lava by now. The raised relief from the craters is telling us that the crater had a large impact on the surface of the Moon. Where you see a crater, and then the shadow on the crater will usually tell you how deep the crater dug. According to these pictures since the Sun is coming from the left, the right side of the raised relief (of the crater) shows you how high the land moved up because it is catching much of the sunlight.

In this picture, I tried to see the different colors that the Moon radiated. What I did was take different colored filter and took the shots of the Moon with a CCD camera. I decided to see the blue and the red of the Moon. By taking the two colored filters, I took the blue picture and divided it by the red and was given the picture above. In this picture, we see that the blue, which is the brighter shades of the Moon, tell us where there are more minerals in the land, minerals such as the titanium, while the red is the darker regions of the Moon. By looking at this picture and comparing it to the picture at the top of the page, we get a more in depth look at the lava flow. Lava does not flow evenly, and therefore the the sequence of these lava flows differ. The outlines for the lava edges differ from the top picture where it appears to flow more towards the left where in this picture the lava flow stops more towards the right of the Moon. The lava gave a mixture of minerals to the surface of the Moon which is now visible with the use of the different colored filters.